Troy's Blog

ITIL Implementation Roadmap – Part 1

Sequence Considerations

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”  ~Lewis Carroll

Unlike our heroine in the tale of Alice in Wonderland, this post assumes that the reader has made a decision to implement or at least expressed an interest in the IT Infrastructure processes defined by ITIL. The natural result of having made this decision is the question, where do I start?

When developing a roadmap of where and how to start implementing the processes defined by ITIL, there are several considerations to take into account.

The approach is typically expressed by the following questions:

• Where are we now? (People, Process, Technology)
• Where do we want to be?
• How are we going to get there?

Based on these questions, an organization can use the model at the link below to assist with the development of a customized roadmap of what processes they will implement in a sequential or parallel order.

Sequence Considerations

1. The first task to accomplish is to establish a benchmark or baseline of process maturity by either doing a self-assessment or by having an external provider such as Pink Elephant provide a point in time reference.  This activity provides necessary input into the decision making process as well as providing the added benefit of establishing a starting point, which can be referenced when expressing improvements that have been realized by the ITIL program.
2. The next step is to then plot each process on the grid pictured in the link above to determine how each process can potentially affect the business from a risk perspective. The IT organization has the potential to greatly facilitate business goals.  However, failures in IT controls and processes have the potential to also essentially disable business beyond recovery from a technical, legal, and reputation perspective.  Example: An immature Release and Change Management process can impact an online trading system significantly.
3. The third axis of input should be guided by the consideration of a number of organizational issues, such as process dependencies, organizational culture, funding, resources, political ability to influence, the need to establish early quick wins, etc.  Based on these three input axis, an organization can begin to establish a roadmap unique to their situation.

Note: Use the model represented on the link and these considerations to run a whiteboard and sticky note exercise with your project team to agree on what processes need to be addressed first.

Based on this model, it should become clear where a specific organization would start and how a program focused on process improvement can then be defined. However, the one missing element in this model is the fact that processes have a sequential order based on dependency, which must be taken into consideration.  Additionally, other factors such as level of difficulty and current IT culture must be taken into account.  For example, from a pure logic perspective one might assume that Configuration Management should be implemented first since it plays a critical role in almost every other major IT process.  The challenge with this philosophy is that it is also seen as one of the most difficult processes to implement successfully due to the factors listed above and does not have a chance if Change Management has not gained a reasonable level of control over the IT environment. 

The next set of posts will be written to assist an organization in understanding how to improve processes in a staged manner and to provide insights into major dependencies between processes that also impact sequence.

Troy’s thoughts what are yours?